The purloined Hegel:

semiology in the thought of

Saussure and Derrida

TONY BURNS

A

BSTRACT

This paper explores the thought of Hegel, Saussure and Derrida regard-
ing the nature of the linguistic sign. It argues that Derrida is right to
maintain that Hegel is an influence on Saussure. However, Derrida mis-
represents both Hegel and Saussure by interpreting them as falling
within the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian philosophical tradition.

Key words Derrida, Hegel, linguistics, Saussure, semiology

INTRODUCTION

These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street,
escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the
physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehen-
sion by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those consider-
ations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. (Edgar
Allan Poe)

1

A number of commentators have emphasized the importance of Hegel for
our understanding of Derrida’s approach to philosophy in general. For
example, in the preface to her English translation of Of Grammatology,
Gayatri Spivak suggests that ‘Hegel’s shadow upon Derrida is diffuse and

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

Vol. 13 No. 4

© 2000 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

pp. 1–24

[0952-6951(200011)13:4;1–24; 015677]

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 1

gigantic’ (Spivak, 1976: liv). Michael Kelly has maintained that an ‘important
part’ of Derrida’s development of deconstructionism ‘has passed through a
critical reflection on Hegel, who consequently haunts much of his writings’
(Kelly, 1992: 43). And Vincent Descombes has maintained that because for
Derrida ‘the language of philosophy is irremediably Hegelian’, then it
follows that the question ‘At what distance does Derrida stand from Hegel?’
is a crucial question for anyone who is interested in Derrida’s thought
(Descombes, 1980: 139–40, 148). It was only to be expected therefore that, as
Stuart Barnett has recently done, someone would eventually produce a work
devoted to a general consideration of the connection that exists between the
thought of Derrida and that of Hegel (Barnett, 1998). On the other hand,
however, it must also be said that it is surprising that the work in question
does not contain a single chapter dealing with Derrida’s views on semiology,
and with the relationship that exists between Derrida and Hegel regarding
this particular aspect of Derrida’s thought.

Any treatment of this subject requires at least some discussion of the work

of Saussure, and especially of the connection between the views of Saussure
and those of Hegel with respect to questions of semiology. For it is Saussure,
and his Course in General Linguistics (Saussure, 1974), who stands as the vital
intermediary between Hegel and Derrida with respect to these questions.

2

Even a very cursory reading of the Course suggests that the similarities
between Saussure’s account of the nature of the linguistic sign and that advo-
cated by Hegel in his Philosophy of Mind are striking.

In our view, therefore, it comes as no surprise that in ‘The Pit and the

Pyramid’, an essay devoted to Hegel’s semiology, Derrida should claim that
semiology, in the sense in which this term is employed by Saussure, lies ‘at
the centre, and not in the margins or the appendix, of Hegel’s Logic’ (sic).
Neither is it a surprise that Derrida should take the view that Hegel’s Philos-
ophy of Mind contains ‘the entire theory of the sign’ as it was later to be devel-
oped by Saussure. Nor, finally, is it a surprise that Derrida should claim that
it was, therefore, Hegel who first ‘inherited’ the ‘opposition of sign and
symbol and the teleology which systematically orients it’ and that ‘after
Hegel’ it is the ‘same opposition and the same teleology’ which ‘maintain
their authority’ in Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (Derrida, 1982b:
1, 83, 86).

3

In fact the only thing which is surprising about Derrida’s treat-

ment of the relationship between Hegel and Saussure is the fact that Derrida
devotes so little attention to the discussion of it. There is no separate chapter
on Hegel in Derrida’s Of Grammatology, and Hegel is referred to only infre-
quently there. Derrida does discuss Hegel briefly (as a precursor of gram-
matology rather than of structuralism) in one of the essays, namely ‘The End
of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’ (Derrida, 1976b: 24–6). Indeed, he
describes Hegel there as being ‘the last philosopher of the book and the first
thinker of writing’ – a comment that has led Geoffrey Strickland to maintain

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

2

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 2

that Derrida considers Hegel to be ‘the first semiologist’ (Strickland, 1983:
21). But Derrida’s treatment of Hegel in this essay is cursory. The most exten-
sive discussion of Hegel’s views on language and signs is, as we have seen,
presented almost as an afterthought in the essay on ‘The Pit and the Pyramid’.
However, even in the later essay it is evident that Derrida is much more inter-
ested in Hegel than he is in Saussure, or in the relationship which exists
between these two thinkers. He makes no attempt to consider the specific
nature of this relationship. He merely takes it for granted that such a relation-
ship exists and that it is extremely important. The implication, therefore, is
that according to Derrida, Saussure simply repeats in the Course in General
Linguistics what Hegel had already said before him about the nature of the
linguistic sign in the third volume of his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical
Sciences.

In what follows I propose to subject Derrida’s Hegelian interpretation of

Saussure to a critical examination. I shall argue that although his interpre-
tation of the views of both Hegel and Saussure is open to some criticism,
nevertheless Derrida is quite right to emphasize the importance of the affin-
ity that exists between the thought of Saussure and that of Hegel so far as
questions of semiology are concerned. I shall also argue that, whether or not
they are justified, a familiarity with the criticisms which Derrida makes of
Hegel and Saussure is essential for anyone who wishes to understand the
approach to language adopted by contemporary poststructuralism.

In order to defend these claims I shall do three things. First, I shall say

something about Hegel’s views on the nature of the linguistic sign in the Phil-
osophy of Mind. Second, I shall discuss the extent to which Saussure’s Course
in General Linguistics relies on the vocabulary of Hegelian metaphysics.
Finally, I shall consider what Derrida has to say about the views of Hegel and
Saussure, his two most significant predecessors so far as questions of semiol-
ogy are concerned.

SEMIOLOGY IN HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

As is well known, it is one of the basic principles of Hegel’s metaphysics
generally that the world is populated by concrete individuals and that each
one of these individuals is composed of two key elements.

4

One of these

elements is a universal. It is a general idea or concept. The other is a particu-
lar which is, according to Hegel, ‘sensory’ (that is to say, material or physi-
cal) in nature. Hegel suggests in his Logic that the component elements of
such individuals are inseparable from one another. For Hegel, it is the prin-
cipal task of philosophy to consider things as individuals. When one sees
things this way one sees them in their actuality.

5

It seems clear from what Hegel says in the Philosophy of Mind that he

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

3

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 3

considers words or linguistic signs to be concrete entities in this specific
sense. For example, Hegel refers to words as being the ‘concrete signs of vocal
language’ (Hegel, 1971: 214–15, 212). As such, words are, as Hegel himself
puts it, ‘general ideas’ which are associated with some particular, ‘freely
selected’, ‘external’ or ‘sensuous’ material. In the case of all linguistic signs,
Hegel says, the general idea in question makes itself into an object of sensu-
ous ‘intuition’, or into something ‘which can be intuitively perceived’,
namely a word (Hegel, 1971: 212). A word, therefore, for Hegel is similar to
all other signs in that it is fundamentally a unity, a concrete fusion of just ‘two
elements’ (Hegel, 1971: 212). The first of these is the general idea and the
second is the sensuous material with which this idea is associated. Hegel
refers to this sensuous material as being a ‘vocal note’. This is the purely
sensory, auditory, or phonic component of the linguistic sign (Hegel, 1971:
214). It is readily apparent from all of this that what Hegel says in the Phil-
osophy of Mind about the nature of the linguistic sign is a straightforward
application of the principles of his general metaphysics to the particular
sphere of linguistics.

In the Philosophy of Mind, Hegel defines ‘language’ as ‘a product of intel-

ligence for manifesting its ideas in an external medium’ (Hegel, 1971: 214).
The starting-point for understanding Hegel’s views on the linguistic sign is
the distinction which he makes between what he calls a ‘symbol’, on the one
hand, and a ‘sign’ properly understood, on the other. Initially, Hegel defines
a symbol as being ‘an external object distinct from us in which we are con-
scious of an inner quality, or which we generally connect with such a quality’
(Hegel, 1971: 81). This definition is not particularly enlightening to the un-
initiated reader. However, what is really important about symbols is that they
are ‘images’ which, according to Hegel, possess a certain ‘natural’ or ‘immedi-
ate’ relationship to the ideas which they are supposed to symbolize. In order
to illustrate what he means by such a relationship Hegel uses the example of
colour. There is, he suggests, a natural relationship between certain colours
and the different psychological moods which these colours are commonly
thought to represent. Thus, in Hegel’s view, it is entirely natural (and, by
implication, it is a universally recognized custom) that ‘for the expression of
grief, of inner gloom, of the shrouding of the spirit in darkness, we take the
colour of night, of the darkness which is not brightened by light, of the
colourless black’ (Hegel, 1971: 81). In the case of symbols, therefore, Hegel
says that ‘the original characters (in essence and conception) of the visible
object are more or less identical with the import which it bears as a symbol’
(Hegel, 1971: 213).

In contrast to this, a sign for Hegel ‘is different from the symbol’ (Hegel,

1971: 213). For although (like a symbol) a sign certainly represents a general
idea, nevertheless it does not do so in any natural or immediate manner. For
Hegel, signs are able to carry out this representative function without relying

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

4

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 4

directly on what might be referred to as the specific ‘sensuous content’ of the
sign in question. The relationship between a sign and the idea which it rep-
resents is, therefore, according to Hegel, one in which the idea in question
has, in a sense, been ‘liberated’ from the sign’s immediate sensuous content
(Hegel, 1971: 212). Hegel insists in the Philosophy of Mind that the sign,
understood in this particular sense, ‘must be regarded as a great advance on
the symbol’ (Hegel, 1971: 212). The primary reason for this is that com-
munication by means of signs, rather than symbols, represents a transition
from a more natural and primitive form of thinking to a more sophisticated
and abstract form, the sort of thinking which is usually associated with phil-
osophy and genuinely philosophical knowledge. This is the principal reason
why, in the Philosophy of Mind, Hegel maintains that alphabetic writing
should be considered to be superior to hieroglyphic writing. For alphabetic
writing is a mode of communication which does employ signs rather than
symbols. The signs which are employed by alphabetic writing are words. And
it is precisely because alphabetic writing uses words rather than symbols as
a medium of communication that it is, in Hegel’s view, ‘on all accounts the
more intelligent’ of the two forms of writing. For in alphabetic writing the
word, which is ‘the mode, peculiar to the intellect, of uttering its ideas most
worthily’ is ‘brought to consciousness and made an object of reflection’
(Hegel, 1971: 216).

When discussing the nature of the sign, as opposed to that of the symbol,

therefore, Hegel attaches a considerable degree of importance to the fact that
in so far as signs proper are concerned ‘intelligence’ has ‘finished with the
content’ of sensuous intuition. Hence in the case of the sign, unlike that of
the symbol, the ‘sensuous material’ associated with a sign ‘receives for its soul
a signification foreign to it’ (Hegel, 1971: 212). A sign is ‘an image which has
received as its soul and meaning an independent mental representation’. As
such, it represents ‘a totally different import from what naturally belongs to
it’ (Hegel, 1971: 213).

In order to illustrate his meaning here, once again Hegel refers to a number

of specific examples. He suggests, for instance, that ‘a cockade, or a flag, or a
tombstone’ is a sign rather than a symbol, and that this is so because each of
these things ‘signifies something totally different from what it immediately
indicates’. The relationship between each of these things, considered as signs,
and the general ideas which they represent is not, therefore, at least accord-
ing to Hegel, in any way a natural one. There is, in Hegel’s opinion, no
obvious rational or logical connection in these cases, or indeed generally,
between the sensuous and the conceptual component of the sign. On the
contrary, the relationship between the two is one which is fundamentally
arbitrary and conventional, in the Aristotelian sense of the term. It is a
relationship which is not universal, but historically relative, being confined
to a particular society or culture, or at least to a limited number of societies

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

5

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 5

or cultures. One of the fundamental principles of Hegel’s semiology, then (as
it will be for Saussure), is what Hegel refers to as the ‘arbitrary nature of the
connection’ which exists between ‘the sensuous material’ associated with a
given sign and the ‘general idea’ which this sensuous material represents.
According to Hegel, this principle of the arbitrary nature of the sign applies
to all signs. Hegel insists that it is, however, a principle which is ‘especially
true of language signs’. It is for this reason, Hegel alleges, that the meaning
or ‘significance’ of all signs, including linguistic signs, is something which
cannot be discerned a priori by reason alone. In all cases, this is something
which ‘must first be learned’, on the basis of observation and experience
(Hegel, 1971: 212).

Another key distinction which Hegel makes in his Logic is that between

the essence of things, on the one hand, and the appearance of things, on the
other.

6

It is the underlying essence of things, which, for Hegel, constitutes

reality (Hegel, 1975a: 27, 33–5, 135). Hegel is a philosophical idealist. (Hegel,
1975a: 33–4, 37, 52, 67, 73, 223).

7

As such, he takes the view that it is ideas

and concepts, that is to say, universals, rather than material objects or par-
ticular existent things, which are truly real (Hegel, 1975a: 33–4, 66–70, 73–4,
187–8, 228). In Hegel’s opinion, the realm of existence is one and the same as
the realm of appearance (Hegel, 1975a: 179–81). The belief that reality and
existence are identical is, according to Hegel, an illusion of the understand-
ing.

8

Thus, for example, common sense tells us that reality is composed of

physical or material objects which exist in time and space. This, however, is
an illusion. There are physical objects, and these certainly do exist, or are
observable in time and space, but it is wrong to identify these with reality.
For such things are themselves merely the appearances of other entities which
have a better claim than they do to be considered as candidates for that which
is truly real. These other entities are ideas, concepts or essences, understood
as entities which are timeless and universal, which are neither created nor
destroyed and which might be said to constitute forms of being rather than
of existence as such (Hegel, 1975a: 33–4, 37, 67–8).

Once again, therefore, it seems evident that what Hegel has to say about

the nature of the linguistic sign in the Philosophy of Mind is a straightforward
application of the metaphysical principles developed in the Logic. From this
point of view, that aspect of the linguistic sign which Hegel refers to as the
vocal note is a mere phenomenal appearance of some underlying reality or
essence which is an abstract idea or concept. Like the phenomenal appear-
ances of all things, this vocal note is accessible to the senses. Although it is
not tangible, it is certainly auditory. As such, it might be said to exist in time,
even if it does not exist in space. As Hegel himself puts it, the vocal note
‘invests’ these general ideas or ‘conceptions’ with ‘the right of existence’.
According to Hegel, it is of the very nature of ‘the intuition used as a sign’

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

6

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 6

that it should be associated with existence, and therefore that it should be
locatable ‘in time’ by means of the senses (Hegel, 1971: 213). It is for this
reason that Hegel refers to the vocal note as the ‘material part’ or the ‘ele-
mentary material of language’ (Hegel, 1971: 214).

In the light of what we have already said about Hegel’s acceptance of the

arbitrary nature of the sign, it follows that, for Hegel, it is precisely this vocal
note, or the purely phonic component of the linguistic sign, considered in
abstraction from its conceptual element, which is a matter of custom and arbi-
trary convention. According to Hegel, the vocal note is an entirely arbitrary
or accidental phenomenon – a contingent appearance, in the language of a
particular society or culture, of some underlying conceptual essence. In
Hegel’s view, this appearance can and does vary from language to language
and from society to society. The essence itself, however, is universal and
remains always the same. This sensuous or ‘external’ aspect of the linguistic
sign is, Hegel suggests, something which might be said to have been freely
‘instituted’ by thought or ‘intelligence’ (Hegel, 1971: 214).

It follows from this that in some respects Hegel’s views on language are

entirely traditional in their orientation. For example, Hegel’s understanding
of the nature of language is essentialist. Hegel is committed to the traditional
view that, at the conceptual level, it is the basic task of all languages to
describe or name those things, or types of things, which populate the world.
In language, words are associated with concepts, and these concepts might be
said to grasp or capture the essential nature of the thing or type of thing which
the word in question names or describes, or to which the word refers.

9

Thus,

in the Philosophy of Mind Hegel points out that signs are simply the names
of ‘sense objects’. He makes a clear distinction here between what we would
refer to as proper names, which refer to just one specific individual, and
general names, the signification of which is expressed in a definition in the
traditional Aristotelian sense. These definitions, Hegel acknowledges, are
‘frequently changed’ because of ‘differences of view with regard to the genus’
or some other ‘supposed specific property’. Hegel also suggests, as we have
already noted, that one of the reasons why alphabetic writing is superior to
hieroglyphic writing is because in alphabetic writing the word is ‘brought to
consciousness and made an object of reflection’. Here, therefore, the work of
‘sign-making’ is, Hegel says, ‘reduced to its few simple elements’, in which
‘the sense factor in speech is brought to the form of universality’, and in
which this universal factor then ‘acquires complete precision and purity’ in
its articulation. Hence, according to Hegel, it is in alphabetic writing that
‘ideas have names strictly so called’. In writing of this sort, therefore, the
name is, Hegel says, the ‘simple sign’ for an ‘exact idea’, that is, an idea which
has been precisely defined. According to Hegel, ‘the fundamental desidera-
tum’ of all language is ‘the name’ (Hegel, 1971: 216–18).

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

7

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 7

HEGEL AND SAUSSURE’S COURSE IN GENERAL

LINGUISTICS

Although it appears to have gone completely unnoticed by most commenta-
tors apart from Derrida,

10

it is not at all difficult to trace the influence of

Hegel’s philosophy generally, and his views on the linguistic sign in particu-
lar, on Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. Indeed, once our attention
has been drawn to it, this influence appears strikingly obvious. For Saussure,
signs are the building blocks of language (langage), just as ‘individuals’ are
the building blocks of the world as Hegel understands it. One illustration of
Saussure’s debt to Hegel is the fact that, like Hegel, he makes a clear theor-
etical distinction between a symbol, on the one hand, and a sign, on the other.
Moreover, again like Hegel, Saussure maintains that what differentiates a
symbol from a sign, properly so called, is the fact that in the case of a symbol
the relationship which holds between the signifier and the signified is, as J.
G. Merquior has pointed out, ‘natural rather than arbitrary’ (Merquior, 1988:
124).

Another illustration of Saussure’s Hegelianism is provided by his claim

that a linguistic sign is a concrete object (Saussure, 1974: 102–3, 111, 113–14).
It is clear from the way in which Saussure uses the term ‘concrete’ in the
Course that he means the same as Hegel means by it. To say that a sign is a
concrete object, is to say that it has two component parts. As we have just
noted, Saussure refers to these as the signifier and the signified (Saussure,
1974: 66–7). Like Hegel, Saussure suggests that the distinction between the
signifier and the signified is the distinction between a word, understood as
simply a sound (or ‘sound-image’), and the idea or concept with which this
sound is associated and which gives the sound its meaning (Saussure, 1974:
65–6). When Saussure talks about signs he is usually thinking about words
understood in this specific sense, as ‘meaningful sounds’ (Saussure, 1974:
113–14).

According to Saussure, then, like signs generally, words are composed of

a sound or phonic element, on the one hand, and a conceptual element, on
the other. The former is quite literally a pure sound, without meaning. The
latter might be said to be a pure thought, without any specific phonic content
(Saussure, 1974: 104). It is extremely important to note, however, that Saus-
sure insists in the Course that although the two component elements of the
linguistic sign, signifier and signified, are not actually identical with one
another, nevertheless they cannot be completely separated either. To think of
them in isolation from one another is to think of them as being what Hegel
would refer to as abstractions. As Saussure himself puts it:

The linguistic entity [sign] exists only through the associating of the sig-
nifier with the signified. . . . Whenever only one element is retained, the

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

8

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 8

entity vanishes; instead of a concrete object we are faced with a mere
abstraction. We constantly risk grasping only a part of the entity and
thinking that we are embracing it in its totality. (Saussure, 1974: 102–3)

For Saussure, as John Sturrock rightly points out, in language (langage) there
can actually be no pure sounds – no signifiers without signifieds. All sounds,
in so far as they are incorporated within a language, are imbued with some
meaning or other. And similarly, in a living language the purely conceptual
element is always and necessarily associated with the spoken word, and hence
with some phonic element or other. Just as there cannot actually be any pure
sounds, so also, strictly speaking, there cannot actually be any pure thoughts
either. The idea of a pure thought, that is to say, a thought which is not actu-
ally articulated in the words of a particular language, is indeed nothing more
than an intellectual abstraction, albeit one which is useful for students of lin-
guistics (Sturrock, 1986: 14; Sturrock, 1979: 6).

Like Hegel, Saussure takes the view that the linguistic sign, understood as

a concrete entity, should always be thought of as an articulated unity of a uni-
versal (an idea or concept, the signified) with a particular (a specific sound,
the signifier). There is at least one sense, therefore, in which it cannot be
correct to say, as Jonathan Sturrock does, that ‘the Saussurean sign’ is an
‘abstract object’ (Sturrock, 1986: 15). Indeed, Saussure himself explicitly
denies that this is the case in the Course. For example, at one point he insists
that linguistic signs ‘are not abstractions’ (Saussure, 1974: 15). With respect
to this issue, therefore, we are in agreement with David Holdcroft when he
states that the principle that signs are ‘concrete rather than abstract objects’
is a ‘fundamental part of Saussure’s theory’ (Holdcroft, 1991: 169).

As is well known, Saussure makes another important theoretical distinc-

tion in the Course between what he calls ‘language’ [langue], on the one hand,
and ‘speech’ [parole] on the other (Saussure, 1974: 9, 13).

11

He usually associ-

ates speech with the use of the spoken word. It is words, in so far as they are
(meaningful) sounds, which are the fundamental units of speech. The world
of speech, therefore, is the world of the signifier. Saussure associates speech
in this sense with the idea of individual performance (Saussure, 1974: 8, 14).
It is particular persons, living in particular societies at particular times, who
speak. Saussure suggests that if communication by means of speech is to be
possible then there must be some rules which regulate the performance of the
individual speaker. This underlying system of rules is what Saussure means
by a language, in the narrow sense of this term (langue). The world of lan-
guage, in this narrow sense, is the world of the signified. In Saussure’s
opinion, it is language in this narrow sense which makes speech possible
(Saussure, 1974: 73–4).

From the standpoint of Hegelian philosophy, it is ‘language’ in the narrow

sense that constitutes the underlying essence or reality underpinning the

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

9

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 9

surface phenomenon or appearance that we actually observe when people
communicate with one another: namely, speech. That the relationship
between language (langue) and speech can be thought of in this Hegelian way
is something of which Saussure is very well aware. For example, in the
Course, he points out:

In separating language from speaking we are at the same time separating
. . . what is essential from what is accessory and more or less accidental.
(Saussure, 1974: 14)

The conceptual contrast which is made by Hegel and inherited here by Saus-
sure between that which is ‘necessary or ‘essential’ and that which is ‘acci-
dental’ is a common one in the history of philosophy from Aristotle
onwards. It is usually associated with the parallel distinction between that
which is ‘natural’ and that which is merely ‘conventional’ (Burns, 1998a:
143–4, 150–2, 157–8, 160). It is traditionally assumed that that which is
natural is both necessary and essential, applying universally in all societies
at all times, whereas that which is merely conventional is simply a matter of
historical accident, being relative only to some societies and to certain times.
Once again, therefore, on a Hegelian reading of the Course in General Lin-
guistics there is at least one sense in which it cannot be correct to maintain,
as in this particular case David Holdcroft has done, that for Saussure lan-
guage (langue) is merely ‘conventional’ whereas speech is not (Holdcroft,
1991: 21, 23, 37). On the contrary it is, rather, speech which is conventional
and language (langue) which is not. From the standpoint of Hegelian meta-
physics, if language in the narrow sense (langue) constitutes that which is
fundamental or ‘essential’ to language in the broad sense (langage), then this
can only be because the former constitutes a component element of the
latter which is both natural and necessary and which is also, therefore,
something which is universal rather than merely historically or culturally
relative.

In the Course Saussure suggests that the signifier is an entity which exists

and is, therefore, accessible to the senses. As Saussure himself puts it, ‘the sig-
nifier, being auditory, is unfolded solely in time’. It therefore ‘represents a
span’ which is most definitely ‘measurable’ (Saussure, 1974: 70). This, Saus-
sure points out, is the specifically ‘material’ aspect of language (langage). On
the other hand, however, the signified, or essence which underlies this
appearance, is not an existent or material entity but a concept. From Saus-
sure’s point of view, therefore, those entities which are essential in so far as
the world of linguistics is concerned, are the ideas and concepts which mani-
fest themselves in and through existent or material things, in this case the sig-
nifiers of the various different languages. The affinity which exists between
the thought of Saussure and Hegel in this regard is really quite striking. As
Saussure puts it in the Course:

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

10

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 10

[I]t is impossible for a sound alone, a material element, to belong to lan-
guage. It is only a secondary thing, substance to be put to use. All our
conventional values have the characteristic of not being confused with
the tangible element which supports them. For instance, it is not the
metal in a piece of money that fixes its value. . . . This is even more true
of the linguistic signified, which is not phonic but incorporeal. (Saus-
sure, 1974: 118–19)

From the standpoint of a Hegelian reading of the Course, then, Jonathan
Sturrock’s claim that, for Saussure, although langue is an abstraction parole
is certainly real is not strictly accurate (Sturrock, 1986: 9). An Hegelian
interpretation of Saussure would take the view that both langue and parole
are abstractions if and when they are considered in isolation from one
another. Of the two, however, it is langue which is truly real, essential and
hence primary. For Saussure, parole has to do with the purely vocal aspect of
language – and this, as we have seen, is something which Saussure himself
considers to be an accidental or secondary feature of the linguistic sign. It is
the phenomenal surface appearance, or manifest material existence, of the
underlying reality which is the signified, a reality which is, for Saussure as for
Hegel, always conceptual in nature.

It is sometimes suggested that structuralism generally, and Saussure in par-

ticular, rejects the principle of essentialism in so far as it has a bearing on the
study of language. As Sturrock puts it, for Saussure ‘language is a system, not
of fixed, unalterable essence, but of labile forms’. Hence linguistics studies
‘relations between mutually conditioned elements of a system and not
between self-contained essences’. Indeed, structuralism generally has a
‘strong bias against essentialism’ (Sturrock, 1986: 9). There is, however, at
least some evidence to support the claim that such an interpretation of Saus-
sure is incorrect. For Saussure is at times as committed as Hegel to the idea
that there is an underlying essence which underpins the phenomenal surface
appearance of the linguistic sign. With respect to this particular issue at least,
therefore, we are in agreement with Derrida – who suggests that, on the con-
trary, a commitment to some form of essentialism lies at the very heart of
Saussure’s thinking (Derrida, 1997: 7; Sturrock, 1986: 150). From this point
of view, as Eric Matthews has put it, in the Course Saussure is ‘seeking for
the “essence” of language which underlies the diversity of actual linguistic
forms’ (Matthews, 1996: 136). Like Hegel, Saussure does not object to the
concept of essence per se. What he really objects to is the idea that we can
establish the essences of things (or the meaning of words) by considering
them in complete isolation from one another, rather than in relation to one
another – as parts of some overarching system or totality, namely a particu-
lar language (langue) as a whole.

In Saussure’s view, although they are in a sense different from one another,

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

11

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 11

language (langue) and speech (parole) are at the same time necessarily inter-
connected. For although language and speech are ‘two absolutely distinct
things’, nevertheless they are also mutually ‘interdependent’ (Saussure, 1974:
18). As Roland Barthes has pointed out, one could say that they are dialecti-
cally or reciprocally related to one another (Barthes, 1973: 15–16). Thought
of in this way, they can again only be separated in thought and not in reality.
Like the concepts of signifier and signified, the concepts which we have of
language and speech, to the extent that they can be considered separately
from one another at all, are once again merely convenient abstractions. An
extremely important implication of this is that, from Saussure’s point of view,
there can be no thought at all without language. Or rather, to put the point
more precisely, there can be no conceptual thought without language in the
broadest sense of that term (langage). For all conceptual thought requires the
use of words. Hence, precisely because words are meaningful sounds, all con-
ceptual thought is inevitably associated with at least some phonic element or
other. From the standpoint of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics the
idea that there might actually be a pure conceptual thought without the use
of words is a contradiction in terms. As Saussure himself puts it, what we cer-
tainly should never do is to assume that ‘ready-made ideas exist before words’
(Saussure, 1974: 65–6, 111–12).

The theoretical distinction between that which is essential and that which

is accidental in language is intimately associated with what Sausssure, follow-
ing Hegel, refers to as ‘the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign’ (Saussure,
1974: 67–9). Like Hegel before him, one of the things which Saussure means
by this is that there is no obvious rational or logical connection between a
particular signified, an idea or a concept, and the particular word, understood
as a pure sound, which in a particular language is the signifier for it. There is,
however, an ambiguity about Saussure’s claim regarding the arbitrary nature
of the sign. At first sight it is not entirely clear what it is that Saussure thinks
is arbitrary. Is it the signifier or the signified? Everything we have said so far
seems to suggest that what is arbitrary is the signifier. Indeed, as Timpanaro
rightly points out, the term ‘sign’ is often used by Saussure as ‘a synonym for
“signifier” ’ (Timpanaro, 1980b: 156). It is not at all obvious, therefore, that
Saussure thinks that the signified (i.e. the corresponding concept) is arbitrary
as well.

The Hegelian interpretation of Saussure presented above is very far from

suggesting, as Jonathon Sturrock does, that the meaning which is to be attrib-
uted to the signified in a particular language is ‘an open question’ and that
structuralists generally ‘invite us to delight in the plurality of meaning’ that
might be associated with a particular signified or sign. Nor, therefore, is this
reading of Saussure to be associated with any rejection of an ‘authoritarian
or unequivocal interpretation of signs’ of the sort which Sturrock associates
with structural linguistics generally (Sturrock, 1979: 15; see also Norris, 1982:

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

12

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 12

5). With respect to this issue we entirely agree with J. G. Merquior when he
points out that Jonathan Culler’s claim that Saussure commits himself to the
principle of the arbitrary nature of the signified, as well as that of the signi-
fier, ‘is rather hard to square with the well known fact that Saussure himself
in the Course in General Linguistics stresses that the “same signified” exists
both for the French “boeuf” and for the German “ochs” ’ (Merquior, 1988:
231–2). Merquior points out that ‘while we know by heart Saussure’s dicta
on the normally arbitrary signifier, no general statement of his has yet been
adduced that can be taken to assert a normal arbitrariness of signifieds’
(Merquior, 1988: 231–2; see also Scholes, 1985: 89–90; Watts, 1983: 25). The
pluralist (or relativist) reading of Saussure advocated by Sturrock, Norris and
Culler is highly selective because it ignores altogether the more traditional
assumptions regarding language upon which at least some of Saussure’s
Course is based.

On a Hegelian reading of Saussure, the differences which exist between

different languages are to be found at the level of the signifier only, and not
at the level of the signified. As in the case of Hegel, there does at times appear
to be a commitment on Saussure’s part to the quite traditional idea that it is
the principal task of all languages, in their different ways, to grasp, describe
or name the essential nature of things (Hegel, 1971: 216–18). Like Hegel,
Saussure often gives the impression in the Course that, in his view, all people
everywhere do in fact think in much the same way. With respect to this issue,
and again like Hegel, Saussure might be said to be a theorist whose intellec-
tual assumptions are firmly rooted in the presuppositions of the modern or
even the premodern rather than the postmodern age. It could be argued that
a pluralist or relativist interpretation of Saussure amounts, in effect, to
turning him into a poststructuralist thinker avant la lettre.

We cannot, therefore, agree with Timpanaro’s observation that the claim

that Hegelianism had a ‘genuine influence on Saussure’s thought is one which
should be treated with caution’ (Timpanaro, 1980b: 150). On the contrary, in
our view an acceptance of the validity of this claim is an essential prerequi-
site for an adequate understanding of Saussure’s thought generally, and
especially for an understanding of the technical vocabulary of the Course in
General Linguistics. As Derrida rightly suggests, Saussure’s Course is in many
respects a quintessentially Hegelian text.

DERRIDA’S INTERPRETATION OF THE

SEMIOLOGY OF HEGEL AND SAUSSURE

Derrida sees his own discussion of Hegel’s semiology and of Hegel’s influ-
ence on Saussure in his essay ‘The Pit and the Pyramid’ as being simply a con-
tinuation of the analysis of Saussurean linguistics which he presents in Of

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

13

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 13

Grammatology. According to Derrida, like Saussure, Hegel is a ‘logocentrist’
who is committed to ‘the privilege of speech over writing’. Hegel resembles
Saussure in that he too ‘reduces the question of writing to the rank of an
accessory question, treated as an appendix, as a digression, and, in a certain
sense of the word, as a supplement’. Consequently, what is required when
reading Hegel is simply that we ‘mark the ways in which the authority of the
voice is essentially co-ordinated with the entire Hegelian system’ (Derrida,
1982b: 88). Considered from this point of view, the thesis presented by Hegel
when discussing the nature of the linguistic sign in the Philosophy of Mind is
entirely familiar. For, Derrida insists, as we know, ‘this was Plato’s gesture,
and Rousseau’s, as it will also be Saussure’s’ (Derrida, 1982b: 94).

The problem here is that the question of whether Hegel attaches more

importance to speech or (as Derrida puts it) ‘vocal language’ rather than to
writing or ‘written language’ is not the most fundamental point at issue when
considering the relationship between Hegel’s views on language and those of
Saussure. What is the most important issue here is whether Hegel and Saus-
sure are committed to logocentrism in the sense in which Derrida uses this
term. Do they subscribe to what Derrida refers to as a ‘metaphysics of pres-
ence’? In other words, do they in fact, as Derrida maintains, accept the idea
that there can be conceptual thought without the use of linguistic signs?
According to Derrida, the views of Hegel and Saussure are equally logocen-
tric because they rest upon the assumption that there can be what might be
termed pure thoughts, or thoughts which are ‘untainted’ by language –
thoughts which are in some sense extra-linguistic, or non-linguistic, and which
‘await expression’ in and through the medium of language (Derrida, 1976b:
11–12; 1976c: 49, 55). Derrida refers to logocentrism and the metaphysics of
presence, understood in this particular sense, as the ‘exigent, powerful, sys-
tematic and irrepressible desire’ for what he refers to as such a ‘transcenden-
tal signified’ (Derrida, 1976c: 49). In his view the thought of both Hegel and
Saussure rests upon the mistaken assumption that the signified or concept,
understood as an intelligible entity, somehow exists ‘before its “fall”, before
any expulsion into the exteriority of the sensible here below’, in the words of
a particular language. According to Derrida, however, this assumption is pro-
foundly mistaken. For all conceptual thought requires the use of words or
signs. As Derrida himself puts it, ‘from the moment there is meaning there are
nothing but signs. We think only in signs’ (Derrida, 1976c: 49–50).

Paradoxically, then, despite his emphasis on the influence of Hegel on

Saussure, Derrida associates what he takes to be Saussure’s position on the
question of whether there can be thought without language (a position which
Derrida himself considers to be erroneous) with an exclusive emphasis on
Saussure’s part on the world of the signified as opposed to that of the signi-
fier. On Derrida’s reading of Saussure the former world is the world of
thoughts and concepts, understood as pure entities untainted by language.

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

14

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 14

The latter world, on the other hand, is precisely that of language and of
words. Thus, Derrida attributes to Saussure the view that we can in fact com-
pletely divorce the signified from the signifier, thoughts and concepts from
the words which we use to express them.

The difficulty with all of this, however, is that Derrida’s argument is based

on a misreading, not only of the thought of Saussure but also of that of Hegel.
For example, when Saussure distinguishes between signified and signifier in
the Course he is not distinguishing between a pure thought or concept,
unconnected with a word, on the one hand, and the word which in a given
language is used to express this concept, on the other. In Saussure’s view,
words are definitely not just signifiers. In the Course Saussure explicitly
associates words, not with the linguistic signifier, but with the linguistic sign
(Saussure, 1974: 65–7, 104, 113–14). Words, for Saussure, are what Hegel
would refer to as concrete entities. It follows from this that when Saussure
distinguishes between the two component elements of the linguistic sign, the
signified and the signifier, he is not distinguishing between a pure concept, in
Derrida’s sense, and the word which is used to express it. He is, rather, dis-
tinguishing between the conceptual aspect of a particular word and its
acoustic or phonic aspect. Saussure is very well aware that there can be no
conceptual thought without the use of words. In fact, as we have seen, in the
Course in General Linguistics he explicitly rejects the view that there can be
thought without language, which Derrida erroneously attributes to him in
his Of Grammatology (Saussure, 1974: 65–6, 111–12). Indeed, it is quite
astonishing that Derrida should attribute the idea that the signifier and the
signified can be completely separated from one another to Saussure. For else-
where he explicitly acknowledges that for Saussure signifier and signified ‘are
distinguished simply as the two faces of one and the same leaf’ (Derrida,
1976b: 11).

It is a central aspect of the thinking of both Hegel and Saussure that con-

ceptual thought, and hence meaning, is not anterior to the linguistic signs
which are used to express or convey it. Like the good Hegelian which he is,
Saussure considers the signified or the thought to be a component element of
the sign or the word. The sign itself is a totality or whole which is prior to, and
has priority over, either one of its two component elements. Neither of these
components can be properly grasped or understood in isolation from the other.
Each must be considered in its relation to the other, and hence to the whole of
which they are both parts. For Saussure, then, it is not the signified or thought,
which is the abstract entity, that comes first. It is, rather, the linguistic sign or
the word, the concrete object of language. In Saussure’s view, there could not
be any conceptual thought at all unless, first, there was language (langage) and
hence also, of course, words. From the standpoint of a Hegelian interpretation
of Saussure, Derrida’s reading completely reverses what Saussure has to say
about this question in his Course in General Linguistics.

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

15

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 15

It is somewhat ironic, then, that despite his recognition of the importance

of the influence of Hegel on Saussure, in the end Derrida interprets Saussure
as not being a genuine Hegelian at all. To claim, as Derrida does, that Saus-
sure is of the opinion that there could be conceptual thought without lan-
guage is to suggest that Saussure would wish to maintain that there can be a
signified without a signifier. It is to attribute to Saussure the view that we can
completely separate or divorce the two component elements of the linguistic
sign. It is to interpret Saussure, wrongly, as subscribing to the linguistic
equivalent, not of an Hegelian immanent metaphysics, but of some kind of
transcendent or dualist metaphysics of the sort usually associated with the
philosophy of Plato or with that of Kant.

12

We cannot agree, therefore, with Timpanaro and others when they suggest

that the metaphysical underpinnings of Saussure’s structuralism lie, primarily,
in the philosophy of Plato (Timpanaro, 1980b: 144, 150–1, 158, 169–70, 187)

13

and that Saussure’s thinking has an important affinity with what Hegel would
describe as Plato’s ‘transcendent idealism’. Indeed, on the contrary, one
implication of an Hegelian interpretation of the Course is, not surprisingly,
that it brings Saussure much closer to Aristotle in terms of his general meta-
physical assumptions.

14

Derrida’s interpretation of Saussure is dualist precisely because he attrib-

utes to Saussure the view that there are pure thoughts and concepts which
subsist in a timeless world of being just waiting to be given a tangible, material
expression or concrete existence by being associated with the signifiers of a
particular language. This is to present Saussure as subscribing to the linguis-
tic equivalent of a transcendent metaphysics very similar to that of Plato.
Moreover, given that Derrida thinks that Saussure’s views regarding language
and the linguistic sign are more or less identical to those of Hegel, it follows
that Derrida interprets Hegel, also, as subscribing to some sort of transcen-
dent metaphysics of the Platonic variety.

15

Such a reading suggests that not

only Saussure, but also Hegel himself, has forgotten that the linguistic sign is
an ‘individual’ or a concrete entity.

It is, however, clear from what Hegel says, both in his Logic and elsewhere,

that Hegel emphatically rejects the very idea of transcendent metaphysics,
and especially Platonism. Hegel considers Plato’s idealist metaphysics to be
bad metaphysics because it is ‘other worldly’. In Hegel’s opinion, with such
‘empty and other worldly stuff’ true philosophy ‘has nothing to do’. For
Hegel, as for Aristotle, philosophy has to do with that which ‘is always some-
thing concrete and in the highest sense present’ (Hegel, 1975a: 138 and see
also 40, 276; Hegel, 1979: 10; Hegel, 1974: 92–6; Burns, 1998b). Given this, it
is hardly likely that Hegel would approve of any approach to the linguistic
sign which is logocentric in Derrida’s sense. Nor indeed, as we have seen, does
he in fact do so. For Hegel, just as for Derrida, the idea of a signified having
an intelligibility before its ‘fall’, or before its ‘expulsion into the exteriority

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

16

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 16

of the sensible’ world of material existence ‘here below’, would most cer-
tainly be an anathema. Needless to say, it does not follow from this that our
earlier interpretation of Hegel as a philosophical idealist is incorrect. All that
is implied here is that, while remaining committed to philosophical idealism,
nevertheless Hegel follows Aristotle in rejecting the standpoint of Platonism.
Hegel’s idealism is an immanent and not a transcendent idealism.

Derrida himself, of course, is hostile towards any dualist metaphysics of

the sort advocated by Plato or Kant. In this connection, he makes an
extremely interesting analogy between Saussurean linguistics and Kantian
philosophy. He suggests that the distinction which Saussure makes between
the signified and the signifier, or (as Derrida would have it) between concepts
and words, is analogous to the distinction which Kant makes between the
world of noumena and that of phenomena. Saussure’s signified, the concept,
is the linguistic equivalent, Derrida suggests, of the Kantian noumenon or
thing-in-itself. The signifier or the word, on the other hand, is the linguistic
equivalent of Kant’s phenomenon. In the case of Saussure and linguistics,
however, as in the case of Kant and philosophy generally, there is no possi-
bility, Derrida alleges, of our ever being able to get at the pure concept as it
is in-itself. We can only ever apprehend this concept as it is presented to us
in and through language or words. It is in fact, Derrida insists, ‘impossible to
separate’ the ‘signified from the signifier’ (Derrida, 1976d: 159).

In this respect, then, Derrida is (at least implicitly) sympathetic towards

Hegel’s firm rejection of any dualist metaphysical presuppositions of a
Kantian sort.

16

Derrida would, one suspects, entirely agree with Hegel’s

claim that Kantianism in philosophy must inevitably place an ‘impassable
gulf’ between the realm of reality and that of appearance (Hegel, 1975a:
34–6, 67, 70, 73). The difference between Derrida and Hegel, however, is
that Derrida does not criticize Kantian metaphysics in order to replace it
with a different (immanent) metaphysics which is claimed to be superior to
that of Kant precisely because it is not subject to objections of the sort
which Hegel raises when discussing Kant’s philosophy – objections which
(in so far as they have an application to linguistics) Derrida himself erro-
neously brings against Saussure. Rather, Derrida considers the inadequacies
of Kantianism to be a sufficient reason for rejecting metaphysics altogether,
both in philosophy and in linguistics. Consequently, he suggests that, as in
philosophy generally, so also in linguistics we should completely abandon
the distinction between the thing-in-itself and its phenomenal appearance,
or between the signified and signifier, as (according to Derrida) Saussure
understands it.

Derrida expresses this point by claiming that there simply is no linguistic

equivalent of the Kantian thing-in-itself, a pure concept which in some sense
lies behind, and can be conceived of separately from, the linguistic signs or
words which are used to express it. All that there is, in fact, is the sign. As he

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

17

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 17

puts it, the linguistic ‘thing itself is a sign’. There is no ‘phenomenality’
behind which ‘the thing signified may be allowed to glow finally in the lumi-
nosity of presence’. For the ‘so called “thing itself” is already a “represen-
tam” ’. This amounts, of course, to saying that within the discipline of
linguistics there are simply no pure concepts of the sort which, at least in
Derrida’s opinion, are postulated by Saussure (Derrida, 1976c: 49). Such a
view, Derrida insists, necessarily involves a rejection of the Saussurean idea
that there is a transcendent signified which might be said to subsist in some
way ‘outside of language’. This is what Derrida has in mind when he says,
notoriously, that there is ‘nothing outside of the text’ (Derrida, 1976d: 158).

This line of reasoning brings Derrida very close to Nietzsche and to

Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics.

17

In his discussion of Saussure in Of

Grammatology Derrida follows Nietzsche in rejecting the vocabulary of tra-
ditional metaphysics which has dominated the history of Western philosophy
from the time of Plato through to that of Hegel and beyond. In particular, like
Nietzsche, Derrida rejects the conventional philosophical distinctions
between the concepts of being and becoming, reality and appearance, essence
and accident, knowledge and opinion, and so on. For Derrida, as for Nietzsche
and his predecessor Heraclitus, philosophy should focus exclusively on the
realm which traditionally has been thought to be of least importance by
students of metaphysics: the realm of appearances and accidents, the con-
stantly changing realm of becoming (Derrida, 1976b: 19; 1976d: 50). In Of
Grammatology at least Derrida would certainly agree with Nietzsche’s claim,
made in The Twilight of the Idols, that Heraclitus was quite right to insist that
the world of being which lies at the heart of traditional metaphysics is nothing
more than ‘an empty fiction’ (Nietzsche, 1972: 36).

18

If we take the funda-

mentally Nietzschean philosophical standpoint which Derrida adopts in his
Of Grammatology and consider how it might be thought of as having a
specific application to linguistics, then certain interesting conclusions follow.
Derrida would, for example, reject Saussure’s idea that linguistic signs are con-
crete entities in the Hegelian sense (Saussure, 1974: 14). He would reject what
he considers to be Saussure’s essentialism. For Derrida, insofar as the linguis-
tic sign is concerned, we should focus exclusively on that which appears, that
is to say, the words of a particular language. Like Saussure, Derrida identifies
linguistic signs with words. Unlike Saussure, however, for Derrida words just
are in their entirety what Saussure would refer to as signifiers, or as he puts it
‘representers’ (Derrida, 1976c: 49). There is no more to linguistic signs than
what they appear to be on the surface. Derrida associates this view with what
he refers to as the ‘absence of the transcendental signified’ in linguistics. He
recognizes very clearly that such a view ‘amounts to ruining the very notion
of the sign’ as Saussure understands it. It amounts to the ‘destruction of onto-
theology and the metaphysics of presence’ (Derrida, 1976b: 7; 1976c: 50). In
linguistics just as much as in philosophy and metaphysics, therefore, Derrida

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

18

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 18

would again entirely agree with Nietzsche that ‘the “apparent” world is the
only one’ (Nietzsche, 1972: 36).

The problem with all of this, though, is that it makes the thought of Hegel

and Saussure, both with respect to philosophy generally and to questions of
linguistics in particular, much more inconsistent than it really is. Derrida mis-
represents both Hegel and Saussure by locating their thought against the
background of the Platonic (transcendent) rather than the Aristotelian
(immanent) tradition of metaphysics. The inevitable tendency of such a
reading is to attribute to Hegel and Saussure the view that we can separate
those things which, when considered from the Aristotelian, that is to say, the
authentically Hegelian standpoint, cannot actually be separated at all. It is to
read into Hegel and Saussure a logocentrism which is not actually there. If
Hegel and Saussure are read in a different way, from the standpoint of the
Aristotelian tradition, then it is evident that this central criticism which
Derrida makes of them is not at all well founded.

CONCLUSION

Our conclusion is a paradoxical one. We are in fundamental agreement with
Derrida that the influence of Hegel’s philosophy generally, and of Hegel’s
theory of the sign in particular, on Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics
is great indeed. Derrida’s suggestion that we need to read Saussure from the
standpoint of Hegelian philosophy is, therefore, an extremely fruitful one.
For this reason alone, Derrida’s approach to the interpretation of Saussure is
to be preferred to the approach which is adopted by most other commenta-
tors. On the other hand, however, it is our opinion that Derrida’s interpre-
tation of the thinking of both Hegel and Saussure is highly selective. It is
selective because Derrida is determined to fit both Hegel and Saussure into
the pre-conceived framework of ideas which he develops in his Of Gram-
matology, a framework which, as is well known, rests on the notions of logo-
centrism and the metaphysics of presence. This framework closely associates
the history of Western philosophy with the history of Platonism and tran-
scendent metaphysics. It requires Derrida to interpret both Hegel and Saus-
sure as being Platonists. In our view, however, it is possible to offer a quite
different reading of Hegel, of Saussure, and of the relationship between the
two, from that which is subscribed to by Derrida. On this alternative reading,
Saussure is indeed heavily indebted to Hegel. Neither Hegel nor Saussure,
however, is guilty of the charge of logocentrism which Derrida brings against
them. For Hegel and Saussure are not Platonists but Aristotelians so far as
questions of metaphysics are concerned. Whatever the problems associated
with Hegelian philosophy in general might be, logocentrism, in the sense in
which Derrida uses this term, is certainly not one of them. The whole point

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

19

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 19

of Hegelianism, both in metaphysics and linguistics, is precisely to get away
from the dualism or ‘other worldly’ Platonism which Derrida himself rejects.
However, unlike Derrida in Of Grammatology, Hegel and Saussure achieve
this objective without falling into that complete abandonment of all meta-
physics which is advocated by Nietzsche.

If Saussure’s views on semiology are interpreted from the standpoint of

Hegel’s philosophy (properly understood), then they are in some respects
quite conventional. As we have seen, at times Saussure is as committed as
Hegel to the traditional view that language is fundamentally a nomenclature,
the purpose of which is to capture the essential nature of things. We noted
above that a rejection of an ‘essentialism’ of this sort is central to Derrida’s
critique of both Hegel and Saussure. It could be argued, therefore, that it is
actually Derrida rather than Saussure who finally makes a complete break
with the traditional view of language which we find in Hegel and who
embraces the principles of relativism, pluralism and diversity which are often
associated with structural linguistics. On this interpretation, many of the
beliefs which have been identified as ‘structuralist’ by commentators such as
Culler, Norris and Sturrock ought really to be associated, not so much with
structuralism itself, but with poststructuralism, and especially with the
thought of Derrida. It is clear enough, however, that Derrida’s own views
regarding the nature of the linguistic sign in Of Grammatology were devel-
oped largely as a consequence of his critical engagement with the thought of
Hegel and Saussure. Their influence on Derrida’s thinking has indeed been
decisive. Although there are undeniably flaws in Derrida’s Hegelian interpre-
tation of Saussure, nevertheless contemporary poststructuralism would not
exist without them.

NOTES

1 The quotation is from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story ‘The Purloined Letter’. See

Poe (1975: 345) and also n. 10 below.

2 Hegel’s views on semiology are to be found, above all, in his Philosophy of Mind

(Hegel, 1971: 210–18) and also the Lectures on Aesthetics (Hegel, 1975b: 303–13,
357–61, 402–20). For a discussion of Hegel’s views see Chaffin (1989); De Man
(1982); and Donougho (1982).

3 For Derrida’s reading of Hegel’s views on the sign see also Chaffin (1989); Cutro-

fello (1991); Llewelyn (1986b: 1–15); and Norris (1987b: 69–77).

4 For Hegel’s use of the term ‘individual’ see Hegel (1975a: 226–7).
5 For Hegel’s use of the term ‘concrete’ see Hegel (1975a: 19-20, 62, 113, 115, 174).

For his use of the term ‘actuality’ see Hegel (1975a: 8–10, 200–2).

6 For Hegel’s use of the terms ‘essence’ and ‘appearance’ see Hegel (1975a: 186–8).
7 For further discussion of Hegel’s idealism, in connection with the traditional

philosophical problem of universals, see Burns, 1998b. The (in my opinion)

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

20

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 20

erroneous view that, to the contrary, Hegel might possibly be interpreted as a
materialist is discussed in Burns and Fraser (2000).

8 For Hegel’s views on the faculty of the ‘understanding’ see Hegel (1975a: 113–15).
9 For a discussion of this traditional view of language see Sturrock (1986: 16–17);

and Culler (1976: 20–3).

10 Hence the title of the present article. See Gasché (1986: 8). ‘If this is a retranslation

at all, it is one that focuses on what Dupin describes, referring in “The Purloined
Letter” to a certain game, as that which escapes “observation by dint of being
excessively obvious”.’ That Derrida is familiar with the work of Poe is obvious
from the title of his essay ‘The Pit and the Pyramid’ and from the fact that he places
a quotation from Poe on the frontispiece of his Speech and Phenomena: and Other
Essays. See Derrida (1973) and Llewelyn (1986b: 25). See also Derrida (1987b),
reprinted in Muller and Richardson (1993), together with the contributions of
Harvey, Johnson and Muller in the same volume.

11 Cf. Hegel (1971: 214). Here Hegel refers to ‘speech and, its system, language’.
12 The suggestion that Saussure is a dualist in the Kantian sense is made by Derrida

himself. See Derrida (1976c: 49).

13 Norris also describes Saussure as ‘remaining caught up in a version of Platonic

dualism’ (1982: 66). Although he does not mention Plato by name, Sturrock
associates Saussure’s thinking with ‘a certain idealism’ whereby ‘we dissociate the
two aspects of the sign’ (Sturrock, 1986, 16). The implied criticism is that Saussure
is a Platonist. See also Sturrock (1986: 137–40); and Llewelyn (1986a: xii, 45, 81).

14 For the metaphysical beliefs of Plato, Aristotle and Hegel, especially regarding the

problem of universals, see Burns (1998b).

15 Derrida is not alone in this. Platonic readings of Hegel are quite common. See, for

example, Foster (1935: 132–3); Findlay (1974); Palmer (1974). Christopher Norris
also has claimed that there is ‘a strain of neo-Platonist mysticism’ in Hegel. Cf.
Norris (1987b: 76).

16 I agree with Richard Rorty when he rejects Christopher Norris’s claim that

Derrida’s deconstructionism is in some sense a Kantian enterprise. See Norris
(1982: 94, 183); and Rorty (1992: 235–46). See also Schrift (1995b: 18–21); and
Harvey (1986: 1–20).

17 That Derrida owes a great debt to Nietzsche is evident from his writings and has

been noted by a number of commentators. See, for example, Merquior (1988:
195–9, 213, 223, 236–7); Norris (1982: Ch. 4). For a detailed discussion of Derrida
and Nietzsche see, in particular, Schrift (1995a: Ch. 1).

18 For a discussion of the attitude of both Hegel and Nietzsche towards Heraclitus

see Burns (1997). For the influence of Heraclitus and Nietzsche on contemporary
poststructuralism and postmodernism see Magnus (1989); Waugh (1991); and
Burns (2001).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnett, S., ed. (1998) Hegel After Derrida. London: Routledge.
Barthes, R. (1973) Elements of Semiology, trans A. Lavers and C. Smith. New York:

Hill & Wang.

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

21

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 21

Burns, T. (1997) ‘Hegel’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Heraclitus: Some Obser-

vations’, in G. Stoker and J. Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies: 1997.
The Political Studies Association of Great Britain, I: 228–39.

Burns, T. (1998a) ‘Aristotle and Natural Law’, History of Political Thought 19(3): 1–25.
Burns, T. (1998b) ‘Metaphysics and Politics in Aristotle and Hegel’, in A. Dobson and

G. Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies: 1998. The Political Studies
Association of Great Britain, I: 387–99.

Burns, T. (2001) ‘Zamyatin’s We and Postmodernism’, Utopian Studies 11(1): 66–90.
Burns, T. and Fraser, I., eds (2000) The Hegel–Marx Connection. London: Macmillan.
Chaffin, D. (1989) ‘Hegel, Derrida and the Sign’, in Silverman (ed.), 1989: pp. 77–91.
Culler, J. (1976) Saussure. London: Fontana.
Culler, J. (1979) ‘Jacques Derrida’, in Sturrock (ed.), 1979: pp. 154–80.
Cutrofello, A. (1991) ‘A Critique of Derrida’s Hegel Deconstruction: Speech,

Phonetic Writing and Hieroglyphic Script in Logic, Law, Art’, Clio 20: 123–37.

De Man, P. (1982) ‘Sign and Symbol in Hegel’s Aesthetics’, Critical Inquiry 8(4):

761–75.

Derrida, J. (1973) Speech and Phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of

Signs, tr. D. B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Derrida, J. (1976a) Of Grammatology, ed. and tr. G. C. Spivak. Baltimore, MD: Johns

Hopkins University Press.

Derrida, J. (1976b) ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’, in Derrida,

1976a: pp. 6–26.

Derrida, J. (1976c) ‘Linguistics and Grammatology’, in Derrida, 1976a: pp. 27–73.
Derrida, J. (1976d) ‘. . . That Dangerous Supplement . . .’, in Derrida, 1976a: pp.

141–64.

Derrida, J. (1982a) Margins of Philosophy, tr. A. Bass. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Derrida J. (1982b) ‘The Pit and the Pyramid: Introduction to Hegel’s Semiology’, in

Derrida, 1982a: pp. 69–108.

Derrida, J. (1987a) The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, tr. A. Bass.

Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Derrida, J. (1987b) ‘The Purveyor of Truth’, in Muller and Richardson (eds), 1993:

pp. 173–212.

Derrida, J. (1997) Dissemination. London: Athlone Press.
Descombes, V. (1980) Modern French Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Donougho, M. (1982) ‘The Semiotics of Hegel’, Clio 11(4): 415–30.
Findlay, J. N. (1974) ‘Hegelianism and Platonism’, in O’Malley (ed.), 1974: pp. 62–76.
Foster, M. B. (1935) The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Gasché, R. (1986) The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Harvey, I. E. (1986) Derrida and the Economy of Différance. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

Harvey, I. E. (1993) ‘Structures of Exemplarity in Poe, Freud, Lacan and Derrida’, in

Muller and Richardson (eds), 1993: pp. 252–67.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1971) Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

22

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 22

Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, tr. W. Wallace and A. V. Miller.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1974[1894]) Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. 2, tr. E. S.

Haldane and F. H. Simson. London: Routledge.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1975a) Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philo-

sophical Sciences, tr. W. Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1975b) Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, tr. T. M. Knox, in 2

volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1979) Philosophy of Right, ed. and tr. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Holdcroft, D. (1991) Saussure: Signs, System and Arbitrariness. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, B. (1993) ‘The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida’, in Muller and

Richardson (eds), 1993: pp. 213–51.

Kelly, M. (1992) Hegel in France. Birmingham: Birmingham Modern Languages

Publications.

Lerner, L., ed. (1983) Reconstructing Literature. Oxford: Blackwell.
Llewelyn, J. (1986a) Derrida on the Threshold of Sense. London: Macmillan.
Llewelyn, J. (1986b) ‘Dialectical Semiology’, in Llewelyn, 1986a: pp. 1–15.
Magnus, B. (1989) ‘Nietzsche and Postmodern Criticism’, Nietzsche-Studien 18:

301–16.

Matthews, E. (1996) Twentieth Century French Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Merquior, J. G. (1988) From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-

Structuralist Thought. London: Verso.

Muller, J. P. (1993) ‘Negation in “The Purloined Letter”: Hegel, Poe and Lacan’, in

Muller and Richardson (eds), 1993: pp. 343–68.

Muller, J. P. and W. J. Richardson, eds (1993) The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida and

Psychoanalytic Reading. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1972[1889]) The Twilight of the Idols, tr. R. J. Hollingdale. Harmonds-

worth. Mx: Penguin Books.

Norris, C. (1982) Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. London: Methuen.
Norris, C. (1987a) Derrida. London: Fontana.
Norris, C. (1987b) ‘Speech, Presence, Origins: From Hegel to Saussure’, in Norris,

1987a: pp. 63–96.

O’Malley, J., ed. (1974) Hegel and the History of Philosophy. The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff.

Palmer, L. (1974) ‘On Hegel’s Platonism’, in O’Malley (ed.), 1974: pp. 77–82.
Poe, E. A. (1975) Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems, Tales, Essays and

Reviews, ed. and intro. D. Galloway. Harmondsworth, Mx: Penguin.

Rorty, R. (1992) ‘Is Derrida a Transcendental Philosopher?’, in Wood (ed.), 1992: pp.

235–46.

Saussure, F. de (1974) Course in General Linguistics, tr. W. Baskin, intro. J. Culler.

London: Fontana.

Scholes, R. (1985) Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

THE PURLOINED HEGEL

23

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 23

Schrift, A. (1995a) Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism.

London: Routledge.

Schrift, A. (1995b) ‘Derrida: The Critique of Oppositional Thinking and the Trans-

valuation of Values’, in Schrift, (ed.), 1995a: pp. 9–32.

Silverman, H., ed. (1989) Derrida and Deconstruction. London: Routledge.
Spivak, G. C. (1976) ‘Translator’s Preface’, in Derrida, 1976a.
Strickland, G. (1983) Structuralism or Criticism? Thoughts on How We Read.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sturrock, J., ed. (1979) Structuralism and Since: From Lévi-Strauss to Derrida.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sturrock, J. (1986) Structuralism. London: Paladin Books.
Timpanaro, S. (1980a) On Materialism, tr. L. Garner. London: Verso Books.
Timpanaro, S. (1980b) ‘Structuralism and its Successors’, in Timpanaro, 1980a: pp.

135–220.

Watts, C. (1983) ‘Bottom’s Children: The Fallacies of Structuralist, Post-Structuralist

and Deconstructionist Literary Theory’, in Lerner (ed.), 1983: pp. 20–35.

Waugh, J. B. (1991) ‘Heraclitus: The Postmodern Presocratic?’, The Monist 74(4):

605–23.

Wood, D., ed. (1992) Derrida: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

TONY BURNS

is a senior lecturer in philosophy and politics at Nottingham

Trent University. He is author of Natural Law and Political Ideology in the
Philosophy of Hegel (Avebury Press, 1996). He is joint editor of The Hegel-
Marx Connection, (Macmillan, 2000).

Address: Department of Economics and Politics, Nottingham Trent Uni-
versity, Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK. Telephone [phone];
fax [phone]. [email: [e-mail]]

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

13(4)

24

01 Burns (jl/d) 7/11/00 3:23 pm Page 24